Stop seeing yourself as a victim

If you want to feel empowered and back in control of your life, it’s a good idea to shift how you see yourself. Do you feel that life ‘happens’ to you and that you have no control over your circumstances? It might be time to re-assess your perception of yourself, your thoughts and your situation.

When we see ourselves as being at the mercy of circumstance, we effectively give up on ourselves and give away our power. Of course, there are circumstances over which we have no control but we can still choose how we think and react to situations.

I feel frustrated when I hear clients resigning themselves to a life of misery because of “what other people have done” to them. They shrug their shoulders and seem to revel in the ‘poor me’ victim role. We can all feel like victims at times and I am all for some self pity – we should be kind and compassionate to ourselves but there should be a time limit to this self defeatist behaviour.

When we take responsibility for where we are in life, we start to feel like goals and dreams are once again possible.

How to stop being a victim

Take repsonsibility for your life. Your past decisions have led you to where you currently in your life. You can make new decisions to change the future path you travel along – you have that choice.

Make decisions and live with the consequences – your decisions, your responsibility.

Cultivate self reliance. The more you trust yourself to deal with life’s challenges the more resilient you will be when the challenges present themselves. Some one who sees themself as a victim believes that others have the control and that their life can only improve when others change – what a disempowering way to live! I wouldn’t want my happiness to depend on the behaviour of other!

Accept that life sucks at times and there are things that happen that are beyond our control. Instead of giving up though, we can keep fighting and believe that we will get through. It’s called self-determinism.

Stop blaming others for where your life is.

The more you blame others, the more you reinforce to yourself that you are weak and powerless.

Ask yourself what steps, no matter how small, you can take to change your life. Start small bt setting yourself little challenges to achieve. This will build confidence.

You are never as helpless as you think. The difference between someone who ends up acting and living like a victim and someone who doesn’t is that the non-victim has self belief. They also never give up hope and believe that they can control some parts of their life – enough to move things around and move forward.

Mandy X

Author: Mandy Kloppers

Mandy is a qualified therapist who treats depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, trauma, and many other types of mental health issues. She provides online therapy around the world for those needing support and also provides relationship counselling.